As you may know, I am a big fan of the WoW Insider Show. I like to listen to old podcasts while playing and I often have the latest on in the background each week while making AFR. Now Mat McCurley, one of the three faces of the WoW Insider Show, has announced that he is leaving to take a job in the games industry. To this we cry “Huzzah!”, and also shed a tear. Good luck, Mat, go chase that star! Thank you for many years of awesomeness. You will be missed.

May 25, 2012

Anyone who’s played a healer, especially lately, can feel a lot of sympathy for Dr. House. Just switch out “People lie” for “People stand in sh*t” and you too can end up wanting to smack the whole world around with your cane.

May 18, 2012

Subtlety really isn’t a big thing in WoW questing, but it’s hard to drop obscure hints when you know most people don’t even bother with quest text and just want to know who to kill next and how many bear intestines to bring back.

I’ve always been bothered by the torture quest in Borean Tundra. Largely because I’m bothered by torture (as every sane person should be), but also because it’s so insulting to be told: “We’re too good and pure to do something as pointlessly cruel as torture, but hey, you look like a person with no moral compass whatsoever!” I like to think of my characters as being better than that.

Now, I know it’s all pixels and code and no actual torture of actual people is involved, but if pixels and code is all we care about then we should throw out all that extraneous “story” and “character” stuff and just play on spreadsheets. Even when I’m not actively role-playing, I still like to feel like my characters have, you know, character, and while I’m okay with killing monsters who can fight back and present a threat to me and my people, I’m not okay with torturing helpless prisoners. That’s not what heroes do.